Gwen's focus was fixed on Sabretooth on the ground, and she didn't notice the Destroyer's attack from not far away.
A heartbeat later, a pillar of scarlet energy howled out to meet the Destroyer's blast mid-air—the counterstrike came from Maguire, who had rushed in to intercept.
Red Hulk and the others arrived as well. Thor looked at the lineup of super-powered beings and felt his mind go blank. "Since when did Midgard have so many monsters?"
Juggernaut—and the freshly regenerated Sabretooth—took one look at the scene and knew recruiting Thor had fallen through. They turned to bolt.
Maguire's brow knit. "Run? None of you are getting away today. Elementalization—Thunder's Advent."
He drove his Thunder Fruit ability to the limit. In the next instant, his entire body transformed into blue lightning. For a hundred miles around, the sky blackened—thunderheads boiling, lightning raging, the clouds pressing low like a lid.
His form swelled and warped, climbing to a colossal several-hundred-meter silhouette wreathed in crackling blue bolts. A roaring electromagnetic field snuffed every signal for hundreds of miles.
Everyone stared up at the thunder giant in shock. "What… what power is that? Lightning itself? That boundless force—this is the true god of thunder?"
Thor stood there, stunned, eyes wide. "What is this? How can he command so much lightning? Even at my peak, I could never draw that much…"
Watching through the Destroyer's sight from Asgard, Loki's eyes bulged. "How—how is this possible? How can that man control thunder?"
Garfield and Holland were amazed that Maguire now wielded thunder as well, but by this point they'd grown used to Maguire's abyss-deep bag of tricks. They grabbed the Goddess of Thunder—Gwen—and ran for distance. Maguire's body was simply too large.
Seeing the sky-filling storm, Juggernaut and Sabretooth panicked. Sabretooth shouted to his partner, and both tore off at full speed.
High above, the thunder giant smiled coldly. "Run? Are you faster than me?"
"Heavenly Thunder—World's End."
The heavens strobed. A blue beam meters thick slammed down from the clouds, spearing the earth where Juggernaut and Sabretooth fled. There was no escaping that speed. The torrent of lightning swallowed them whole.
When the glare faded, the ground had gone pitch-black—soil vitrified and carbonized, its structure cooked and ruined by the heat and force. The air held a sickly sweet roast-meat smell.
Near Juggernaut's body lay a scatter of metal gleaming dully—fragments of adamantium. That was what remained of Sabretooth. For all his near-immortal regeneration, the thunder's onslaught and unimaginable heat had flash-boiled his blood to vapor. This level of damage was beyond any healing.
Sabretooth—dead.
Maguire's gaze slid to the Destroyer. "You can die too."
Power gathered. Endless thunder roared down. A crater hundreds of meters across bloomed in the earth; the Destroyer was left a heap of scrap and slag.
Seeing Maguire erase every enemy in just a couple of moves, Red Hulk and Hawkeye both went pale. "He's too terrifying. We need to pull out—before he decides to 'deal with' us next." They retreated in a hurry.
The battle over, Thor slumped to the ground, hollowed out. Father dead; his brother hunting him. His own power gone. "I'm trash," he whispered, drowning in guilt for the man he'd been.
Maguire shrank back down to human shape and headed toward Garfield and the others—
—when a column of rainbow light crashed down from the sky. Maguire frowned. "More idiots lining up to die?"
The light faded, and a few figures stepped into view—the Warriors Three.
Thor lurched to his feet, and the three lit up to see him. He strode toward them, excited—"Thor, thank the gods! Asgard—" But Thor only spread his hands helplessly.
"The All-Father isn't dead," they said, baffled. "And he never forbade you from returning. Thor, did Loki tell you that?"
Thinking of the Destroyer that had tried to kill him, realization hit Thor. "This was all Loki's plan. What's happened in Asgard?"
"The Frost Giants are invading in force. We came to find you—to lead us against them," the Warriors Three said. Their eyes flicked to Mjölnir in Gwen's hand, a shadow of disappointment crossing their faces. But duty outweighed pride. Thor squared himself and walked up to Maguire's group, stopping before Gwen.
"Miss… would you return my hammer? I need to defend my home. If possible, once I'm done, I—"
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